Defying death: The longevity lab

0:02So I've put some earphones on and now I'm taking up the eye mask. I'm sitting in a smart district of Singapore dedicated to biotech research. The office I'm in is on a street called Biopolis Drive at the corner of Biomedical Grove. You see what they've done here. I'm putting on an experimental neuromodulation device developed by a longevity company called Vibe Science. A little bit heavier than a normal foam eye mask because of the plastic panel materials on the front. strapping it on now on the inside of my eye mask are a series of small white led lights i think the idea is that precisely engineered light and sound waves will soon help switch my brain into a more calm relaxed state i've been told i'm going to be going on a journey the device is meant to help with your sleep and research suggests that people who get adequate sleep live longer than those who don't.

1:02Now the mask itself isn't going to put me to sleep, but the tiny lights are meant to guide my brainwaves and align my circadian rhythms. I'm lying back. I'm waiting for things to happen. I've been asked if I suffer from epilepsy or schizophrenia, so putting on this mask clearly comes with some potential risks. The product hasn't got medical approval yet, but Singapore is a place where these kinds of technologies are being tried and tested. For five minutes, two of the founders hovered over me nervously as airy ambient music wafted through my headphones and LED lights slowly started whisking me away.

1:45Wow, that was a trip. There was a kaleidoscope of colours and forms rotated around a focal point And of course, very quickly, I began to forget that I was in a room with people and the shapes started to resolve into images. I saw whales, ammonite fossils at times when there seemed to be boiling water or lava. And in the end, I was completely removed and relaxed from where I'd been sitting just a few minutes before in a glass and steel science park in Singapore. It turns out that my little escapade through the neuromodulation device was, well, unique. Here's Emma Zhang and Jonathan Reckman from Vibe Science.

2:36So what you experienced just now, actually, was only white light. All the colors, all the shapes, everything was a production of your mind. And everybody's is a little different, which is like the very exciting thing. We see a lot of cool applications that can come out. So it's almost like a Rorschach test with light. You're saying the input is just white light and then the person's mind takes it in whatever direction it will. We were not showing you whales and lava. Sea giants and volcanoes or not, what I saw was a glimpse of a much bigger longevity story in Singapore. Vibe Science is just one startup that's found financial support in this Southeast Asian city-state.

3:20Because if you want to find out how you might not just live longer, but live healthier, Singapore is the place. A living experiment in longevity.

3:37This is Tectonic from the Financial Times. I'm Michael Peel, the FT's science editor. And I'm Hannah Kuchler, the FT's global pharma editor. And in this series, we're exploring the origins of the longevity movement and how it's migrating from the realm of the super rich to the mainstream. In the last episode, we looked at the history of the industry and the rising commercial interest in the field as pharmaceutical and biotech companies join in the efforts to extend human lifespan. Perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in Singapore, where the small country has embraced the idea of technology-enabled life extension for the masses.

4:18So how did Singapore end up at the cutting edge of the longevity craze? Can it be seen as a model for other mass markets? Or will the risks outweigh the rewards of its experimental research? Part 2. The Longevity Lab

4:41So, Michael, you've just come back from Singapore. Why was that at the top of your longevity bucket list, if that's the thing? Well, certainly going to a sunny place at this time of year, I feel did improve my well-being and probably my longevity, Hannah. But the big point, I think, is that Singapore is a bit of a real-time experiment in trying to help people live longer and healthier lives. It's government policy to narrow this gap between how long people live and how long they're healthy for and to make them then healthier for longer. And you just see it in gyms, emphasis on fitness, but also looking at new technologies that can help improve things, some at the margins and some in really quite profound ways.

5:21So this goes far beyond the sort of typical longevity stereotypes of Swiss clinics or Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. It's really trying to make it work for the masses. Well, that's the plan. Singapore is an ageing society. So if you're looking at it from the vantage point of being in another ageing society, as many Western countries are, this is really, really relevant. And this question of how can you help people live not just longer, but live healthier as well. So in Singapore, they're getting older, but they also have money and an appetite for technological innovation. And all of these things point them towards a big effort to improve longevity.

5:58So it's sort of like the perfect longevity Petri dish? That's right. And it's the perfect place to experiment really and innovate and grow because it's a small country and it's a rich country. And that didn't happen by accident. It was the result of many years of central planning, hard-headed pragmatism, building international alliances in a neighbourhood where they're surrounded by lots of bigger countries, including China. So that's the geopolitics of it all. But I wanted to meet the people on the ground, bringing these theories of longevity to life. So I started the trip with a man called Bo Yang Wang, who's an investor in Vibe Science, the company that made the eye mask.

6:43And he's also the founder of a very aptly named venture capital firm called Immortal Dragons.

6:55We are a Singapore-based, purpose-driven longevity fund. We have a preference for underfunded moonshot projects. Wang's moonshot longevity efforts are being funded by the proceeds of a tech company he sold a few years ago. And today, his longevity investments include startups like Vibe Science, as well as companies working on things like gene therapy and 3D bioprinting of your veins. And Wang says that Singapore is perfectly placed to develop these kinds of technologies. We find it a strategic location. One of the things we believe in will be connecting the resources from the East to the West.

7:37There are many different aspects in terms of capital, in terms of talent, and in terms of regulatory arbitrage, right? Being in Singapore where both Westerners and Asians are comfortable in visiting, in setting up business, this is great. It's not just a strategic location. There's some important economic geography here too. Singapore is a global financial center, but Wang says that beyond that, there are also practical regulatory reasons to be based in the Southeast Asian region. Take, for example, scientific studies on primates. Primate studies is important, but at the same time sensitive. When you talk about we need to do some cancer research on, say, crab eating macaque.

8:27Are macaques intelligent enough? Do they suffer? And what is the morality? So in the U.S., for example, to get a primate study approved is very, very difficult. And one macaque can even cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whereas in Asia, people are much more lenient about the idea of using primates for study. For Wang, this leniency in the regulatory system is ideal for his ambitious, indeed contentious, attempts to extend human life. Longevity, fighting aging is my passion and mission. And I'm working on that for decades to come. Hopefully centuries to come. Yes, you believe that human life can be extended that far?

9:11Oh, we have no idea. Actually, the definition of human life will be subject to questions like our intellectual being might surpass our biological body. That's one possibility. We have a portfolio company that's working on a very bold direction of creating brainless clones. Brainless clones? What does Wang mean by that? This was inspired by a natural condition called hydronycephaly. Hydrodencephaly is a disease where the infant is born, but the cerebral cortex is not developed. Instead, you have spinal fluid there. So that infant can chew, they can swallow, they can function, but they can never develop consciousness or any advanced brain function.

10:01So if we can trigger this artificially, in the future, it might become a backup body for yourself. Imagine if we can do a brain transplant, then this new body can become our second home. So it's important to say here that as Wang acknowledges, this idea of what he calls a brainless clone goes well beyond current scientific consensus. But the premise is potentially transformative. Could we create a body without a fully functioning brain? And then could we, in theory, do a brain transplant? Not something that exists yet, I should add, to give you a new body when you grow old. It's all pretty, well, mind-blowing stuff.

10:46But there's a somewhat simpler reason, too, for Singapore's appeal to the international longevity community. The country is grappling with both an aging population and a declining birth rate. As people actually get richer, well off, they tend to have their children at a later time, or even not at all. It's a thing that we are all facing. It should be at most priority for most governments and societies. Unfortunately, it's not the case yet, but we are pushing there. The boom in longevity research is a response to the demands of demography, and the market goes well beyond the private sector as the Singapore government works out how to support its aging population.

11:32My colleague Owen Walker, the FT Singapore correspondent, spoke recently with Tan Kiat Hao, the country's Senior Minister of State for Health, to understand why policymakers here are leaning into longevity. There's a Chinese saying, and different languages in Malay, in Tamil, you have the same belief that seniors are to be respected, that elderly are to be cared for. That's really much fundamental belief here in Singapore, fundamental value of our society. If you see many of our seniors having longer lifespans, basically we are growing old rapidly. And that is a huge demographic trend that we are trying to make sure that we look at.

12:14This ageing population has put a lot of pressure on Singapore's public healthcare system. You can't have all the care for seniors only in institutions, in hospitals, in clinics. But really helping them age in the community gracefully. Firstly, for an individual point of view, it helps to encourage a person to take ownership and charge of his or her own health so that he adds a healthy, active longevity to his own life. But at the same time, medical costs and healthcare costs are escalating rapidly. Better medicine, better interventions, and more costly treatments. And how do we manage the cost increases while providing quality, world-class healthcare to every Singaporean, but at a cost-effective manner.

13:00Government investment in longevity initiatives, from treatments and therapies to research and development, is helping alleviate some of that pressure. And that's all bolstered by a highly effective, some might say authoritarian, style of governance, guiding people along the preventive healthcare path. We've been investing quite a fair bit in R &D, especially the last decade. that we are committed, I think, about a percentage of our GDP on RNG and how human potential is an important part of our research agenda. That research agenda has fed into a push for nationwide genetic testing for hereditary diseases.

13:39And the consistent message here in Singapore is that it's less about merely adding years to your life and much more about extending years of healthy life. The challenge is not just about living longer. is whether they continue to be healthy, happy and able to live independently. The last years of an individual's life, they tend to be going to hospital more often, managing different chronic issues. And in a way, it's not how long you live, but how you live your longer life. So what does living longer yet healthier look like in Singapore today? Go all the way down as far as you can, stretch out hamstrings and then spin upstream.

14:2110 of those. Meet my new trainer, the man who's been dubbed Singapore's Benjamin Button. We're going to be doing biceps right now. So again, elbows pinned to the side. Let's go. One, two. My name is Thiet Lim. I'm 53. I am the aging guru. I'm not going to lie, Lim does look young for 53. I'm here in his home gym, which occupies the entirety of his living room in a quiet, palm tree-fringed neighbourhood of Singapore. My technique is going to be woefully exposed again. What are you doing? Do your best. Lie back. Yep, lie back. Onto the floor, touch the floor behind you. Hard to keep your feet anchored.

15:07That's good. That's fine. I lasted for a full 10 minutes of Lim's longevity-focused workout in the tropical heat. His training centers on a high-intensity routine and basic eating regime aimed at staving off aging-related muscle loss. I asked him what had spurred his personal pursuit of age reversal. So my dad had a heart attack at 69. He didn't have any symptoms or basically he avoided seeing the doctor, right? And we knew that he was overweight, but we thought, no, no, it's fine. You know, he'll just keep on going. but turns out wasn't the case and we now know that his death was definitely preventable and so this was a decision by my sister myself to say look we want to keep mum around for as long as possible so that was actually the motivation behind starting the gym nine years ago Lim and his sister who's also a personal trainer have joined a wider trend for longevity focused gyms across Singapore.

16:12And their mother, who they've been putting through her paces, has become a pin-up for her ability to do pull-ups at the age of 79. She's the perfect poster child for this concept of health span rather than lifespan. So my mum was born at the end of the Second World War, 1945. She's obviously lived through massive transformation of the nation. Singapore is often called a futuristic city. And I think it sets the stage for what I would like to call Singapore 2.0, which is a de-aging nation where healthspan equals lifespan, disease span equals zero. The impetus behind a lot of Lim's work seems to be about reducing or ideally eliminating what he refers to as disease span.

17:01The average Singaporean will have 10 years of disease span. So whilst lifespan in Singapore is long, we live in up to, let's say, our mid-80s on average, the last 10 years are not so joyous, shall we say. It's like, so what if you live to 150, but you've got new friends, your family doesn't give a shit about you, you live like a hermit. What's the point? Well, when you put it like that, it's hardly surprising that Lim himself has been working hard to reverse his own body clock. He told me he'd had tests to check his biological age and they'd shown his body to be a full 10 years younger than his chronological age.

17:41When you said your biological age was 10 years younger, what does that mean in practice? What markers were you looking at there? I'm so glad you brought this up. Okay, my biggest bugbear about the entire longevity field right now is that there is no industry standard for measuring biological age. So I came up with something called the Bespoke Age Test, or BEAT for short, because I want to overcome this massive, I think, obstacle in the way of the longevity field being taken seriously. So let's take a scientific aside here. Hannah, Singapore's Benjamin Button there was talking about his major problem being this lack of standardized biological markers or biomarkers when it comes to aging.

18:26Can you just break down for us, what are biomarkers? Yeah, so these are like biological signs of ageing. Obviously, you can't do a trial and say, if I intervene in this way, I add X years to someone's life, because you might be waiting quite a long time. So people are looking for these signs to see if you can basically measure whether interventions are effective. It's really important, because otherwise you won't know whether regulators could approve medicines. And certainly health systems aren't going to pay for them if they don't know if they're effective. However, Lim talked about this being his biggest bugbear.

18:58I'm not sure it's mine, given some of the stuff you found out. Hit me with it. Well, there's this stuff about brainless clones. I must say, it brings up all sorts of ethical issues. I mean, my biggest questions are, okay, well, do they have rights? Are these brainless clones, like, do women carry these babies without a brain so some rich Silicon Valley guy can have his brain implanted in them? Yeah, and I think that reflects a much bigger problem, that there are so few rules, especially agreed globally, on some of these treatments and therapies being proposed. And so people are, in some cases, sailing to the wildest shores of theory and what they think might be possible, but which is far beyond what is achievable at the moment, let alone answering the question of whether it should be done.

19:44Yeah, I mean, I think the issue here is that it's going mainstream without rules, without regulators really catching up with this area. And maybe that's OK, because, you know, if someone's going to spend loads and loads of money on this, they're incredibly wealthy and they have money to spare. But if it's going to give false hope to people who are worried about dying, that's actually quite a vulnerable group. And so I think we should have more guardrails to protect them from spending money on stuff that's just not proven. Yes, and there is a big thing which you identify here about the impact on people who might, as you say, be vulnerable for all kinds of reasons, might be worried about their health, whether with good cause or not.

20:22and that it's really important to make sure that they have accurate information. They're not being misled. They're not having false hope inculcated them and spending money to get benefits that they think they're going to get, but they're not. Yeah, I mean, obviously, there are areas where there are benefits. It's probably not a bad idea to encourage people to exercise. But does branding it longevity? Is that just kind of a marketing trick? And it's a term that can be moulded so widely that it sometimes becomes almost meaningless. And I think that this is one of the real challenges about working in and indeed talking about this field.

20:57And that, I suppose, brings me to the second part of my Singapore adventure, when I head from the life-extending exercise regime in Lim's living room to the longevity mass market.

21:19Day two. It's a grey and muggy morning in Singapore. I've headed downtown to a semi-building site to try to understand how this city-state has become a pivotal location for the global longevity industry. We just donned hard hats to have a look around because they're preparing for the soft opening of this massive new facility. My guide is Alan Law, property developer and hotelier and the man behind Longevity World. Longevity World itself is 80 ,000 square feet space across level one, two and three. Law hasn't escaped controversy here in Singapore. He was recently ordered to pay 29 million Singapore dollars in a corporate bankruptcy proceeding involving a former hotel business.

22:10He doesn't seem phased though. Instead, he's all in on the current rage for longevity. As we move along, on the right is our welcoming lunch and juice bar, where people can relax and enjoy the space here. Like many affluent cities with extreme climates, much of Singapore's commerce is carried out in air-conditioned shopping malls. This one just happens to be focused around treatments and therapies that might help you live a happier, healthier life. The centerpiece is a specialist longevity clinic called Moro, as in, to Moro. And then on the left here, you will be seeing our recovery area. Loh showed us round the entire space, explaining his vision with the help of huge architectural paper plans.

23:01Through the wires hanging from the ceiling and rubble lining the floors, he clearly sees promise here, hope that Longevity World will become an everyday hangout for Singaporeans of all stripes. Double volume height with your sauna, your whole planche, your steam room. One of its kind in Singapore is what we call a snow room, whereby it's actually slowing inside the room. It will be quite a novelty for Singaporeans. Do you have a machine blowing out snow? Yeah, yeah. So there's a machine and actually converting water into snow. The idea here is contrast therapy. First, a hot sauna and then an ice-cold snow room.

23:45It's meant to be good for all types of recovery, reducing inflammation, improving cardiovascular circulation, even as a hangover cure. All of which could be good for longevity. And there's more. So over here will be the hyperbaric chamber as well as the cryotherapy chamber and the red light therapy here as well. A hyperbaric chamber involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized environment. Supporters say it can improve mental acuity as well as providing various other health benefits. Cryotherapy uses super low temperatures in the hope of quelling inflammation. And red light therapy is meant to help with skin and cell regeneration.

24:26These treatments are already popular in Singapore and beyond. There are still questions, though, about whether there is any scientific evidence they lead to better longevity outcomes. And how much can we say confidently based on the scientific evidence that this is something that genuinely can help improve people's wellness and longevity, as opposed to being something that just makes people feel good? Yeah, so there's some research there, but it's not very solid yet, I would say. So one of the directions we're setting out is that we know there's limited research, but the question is who is going to conduct the extensive research.

25:06We are actually setting out to be the researcher as well, but we wouldn't make any medical claim in that sense at this moment. The lack of scientific oomph doesn't seem to have stopped these treatments selling. And that's in large part down to the packaging. Some of this stuff is just about being pampered in a nice social environment. Law is hoping that if he can make it as much about the experience as the effect, it will appeal to Singapore's large middle class. You're aiming at quite a wide market here, aren't you? This is not just something for the super rich. Yes, indeed. So I think the team have set out to actually try to democratise longevity.

25:43Most of the offering currently, not just in Singapore, but around the world, longevity services are targeting probably the top 5 percentile of the population. What we set out to do is, okay, start with 50 percentile, which is the middle income. For example, in Singapore, our basic category will be looking at about$50 a month. That's 50 Singapore dollars, so that's what, about 35 US dollars, something like that.

26:1235 US dollars is well within the reach of the average consumer in an affluent country like Singapore. So it's affordable and very attractive. Consumer-oriented healthcare seems like a winning combination for an aging Singaporean society. But with little scientific consensus, is there a risk they'll be susceptible to spending money on treatments they don't necessarily need? I'm a physician. I worked in oncology. If somebody would come to me and say, I want chemotherapy, I as a physician would not give chemotherapy. But this is happening in the healthy longevity medicine space. This is Andrea Meyer.

26:54Originally from Germany, she's now a researcher at the National University of Singapore. She says people looking for longevity treatments are being prescribed radical therapies that might not always be appropriate. Very often we forget that we should not start with an intervention, but we should start with analysing what the origin of that ageing process and possibly that failure is to find the right intervention. It might sound as though Maya is a longevity naysayer, but she isn't. She says she just wants the right treatments to be prescribed in the right way. I arrived in Singapore four and a half years ago to set up studies to really see if we can optimize the health and the health span of aging individuals.

27:45The government of Singapore's research grants have attracted a number of prominent longevity scientists and Maya also runs her own longevity clinic. But she says that this attitude of just throwing everything at the longevity problem and seeing what sticks means people are often trying out all kinds of treatments including a slew of supplements that they may not need. In my clinic, I see biohackers who I'm deprescribing. When I ask my patients, come with your supplements, sometimes they have to come with suitcases. And if you are diving into the bottles and see what's really inside, it's a multitude of molecules, sometimes which I have never heard of in concentrations, which are sometimes unbelievable.

28:34So yes, There is absolutely a danger in terms of applying many interventions which are available without knowing which ones work and which ones is indicated. And what are the most common supplements that people are taking, maybe in these suitcases they bring in, but you find yourself recommending that, look, this isn't probably something you should be taking? Very often a mix with 20, sometimes 40, sometimes 90 ingredients of various molecules, even without saying what the expiry date is of that bottle. So if anybody is listening, try to avoid the mixes of everything and the first check if that supplement might be of quality.

29:21Look if the expiry date of that bottle is actually given. That's the first step. What's needed in Singapore and indeed elsewhere? Is it tougher regulation? Is it more voluntary codes? Is it consumer education or all of the above? What? Deep in my heart, I say regulation and regulation and regulation, but that might be because I'm very German. we're back to regulation again that might still be an open question but when you add in an aging population and government grants for research you can see why Singapore has become a longevity lab so if Singapore is the model for the industry what does the future of forever look like how will society change here's Lim the personal trainer again who even in his shirtless state was insightful on this point.

30:13Now we talk about people having a third chapter. So it used to be, well, you work, then you retire, and that's the end. But now there's a third chapter, which is, well, you know, retirement isn't permanent. You might decide to start something else. I think if we get to 150, that's probably going to be chapter four, chapter five, and so on and so forth, right? It's really up to individuals to, I think, find a purpose. if you're going to be around for so long, perhaps you should make it count. So if you have 150 years to work on something that you think is going to advance mankind, then you've got a much longer runway.

30:53In the next episode, Hannah takes us well beyond this island of immortality. If we do indeed get to enjoy a third, fourth, or even fifth chapter, what does that future look like? And how might this longer life raise ethical issues not yet even imagined. Things like having a partner for 90 years, the odds are less that those unions will endure. So what does that mean for understanding marriage and vows to be with someone no matter what for as long as forever? Even your sense of who's in your family, if you undergo, let's say, four marriages and have a flock of great-great-grandchildren, It's just a different conception I think we have to accommodate too.

31:42That's in part three, the future of forever.

31:50This has been Tectonic from the Financial Times. I'm Michael Peel. And I'm Hannah Kuchler. This podcast was produced by Josh Gabbert-Doyon. The senior producer is Edwin Lane. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Fact-checking by Tara Cromey. Mixing and engineering by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. Original theme song by Metaphor Music. Our acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragossa. And special thanks to Owen Walker.